Non-resident father-child contact across divorce cohorts: The role of father involvement during marriage

Abstract

Using retrospective data from the Divorce in the Netherlands Survey 1998 (SIN98, N=808), we investigate changes in children's daytime contact and overnight stays with non-resident fathers across four divorce cohorts from 1949 to 1998. Our findings show that daytime contact and overnight stays increased over time. A modest part of this increase can be explained by a rise in fathers' child-rearing involvement during marriage. Involved fathers are more likely to remain in contact with their children after divorce, and fathers have become more involved in child rearing over time. Furthermore, the role that father involvement plays in daytime contact has become more important over time. Whereas fathers' contribution to child rearing during marriage mattered little in the earliest divorce cohort, it is positively related to post-divorce daytime contact in more recent cohorts.